


Saint

by Dorkangel



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: 5+1 Things, Canon Compliant, Childhood Trauma, Fluff and Angst, Force Ghost Anakin Skywalker, Force Ghosts, Force-Sensitive Han Solo, Foreshadowing, Gen, I can't believe this is canon compliant wow, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kid Fic, Minor Original Character(s), Of Many Kinds, Pre-Canon, Rey (Star Wars) Backstory, Sad with a Happy Ending, Stormtrooper Culture, Worldbuilding, in the form of literal prophecy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-03-06 11:41:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13410501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorkangel/pseuds/Dorkangel
Summary: “The saint of sorrows.” he explains, more gently. “He’s a man... well, not a man, really, he’s a vision of a man that appears to kids in the galaxy when they’re ‘badly used’. That’s what my folks told me. That he tells the kids not to cry and tries to help them.”*Five children that the ghost of Anakin Skywalker appeared to in their hour of need, and one that was happy and at peace.





	1. Finn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This got longer than I originally intended, mainly because I needed to explain who the 'saint' was and then it just... kept going.
> 
> Compulsory trigger warnings for the casual murder of pressganged people by the First Order, not graphic, and their general ongoing murder and abuse of children like Finn, who is twelve.

FN-2187 wakes up to blinding natural light, unfiltered for the first time in more than a year. When he’s been planetside, he’s always been wearing a helmet, and it takes him a few moments of stunned blinking to figure out that he’s _not_ wearing a helmet. His ears are ringing, and he’s lying on his back, stunned and uncertain.

“Am I dead?” he blurts, without thinking.

There’s a little flurry of activity somewhere to FN-2187’s right, as he blinks and slowly comes to the conclusion that the bright light above him is from a hole in the white ceiling of the ship where a panel has fallen away.

“Oh, you’re awake, thank the little gods –” comes a voice from the same side,  and a second later the face of a nervous young man comes into FN-2187’s view. He knows this man: this was the pilot he had been assigned to guard, someone neither important enough nor likely enough to try and bolt to require a fully-qualified stormtrooper escort, but not someone the First Order wanted left alone.

“What happened?” he asks, trying and failing to get himself upright. The pilot offers him a hand.

“We crashed. Well, I crashed. These Order ships – old Imperial ships, really – they’re designed for adults,”

FN-2187 zones out a little, as he’s been scolded for so many times by his superior officers, scouring his brain for where they were meant to be going, and the protocols for a trooper whose vision is spinning. The pilot, hands pushing through his longer than regulation hair, is still babbling.

“...So the shock absorbers in your seat were above your head height, and then the harness was too big for you and you got thrown. I guess in the middle you got pretty bashed up. Wait there, I’ve got a medikit somewhere, you’re probably concussed –”

FN-2187 shakes his head, and does his best to hide the wince at his brain’s spiteful reaction to that.

The pilot stares at him. “Okay,” he says eventually. “If you say so.”

There’s a moment of silence as FN-2187, recalling his training, stands stiff and waits for the pilot’s instruction – probably the pilot isn’t a very high-ranking officer, but FN-2187 is only a cadet.

“I have your helmet.” the pilot offers, bluntly. “It came off in the crash, and I didn’t want to just... shove it back on.”

FN-2187 tries to find the words to ask for it back, and fails; the pilot, luckily, seems to understand and holds it out for him without any further prompting. He’s not even sure why, but FN-2187 hesitates to put it on: he can’t imagine it would do any good for the throbbing headache, the probable concussion he’s choosing to ignore because he can’t afford to make the trouble, but, still. The helmet is protocol.

The pilot restores the ceiling panel and goes back to the cockpit and his chair, with FN-2187 a loyal step behind, just as he’s been taught, cradling his armour in his arms. There’s an automatic repair system that should have them up and running soon, he knows that, even if he isn’t entirely sure how the ship works. That’s not his job.

“How old are you, anyway? That helmet is tiny.”

FN-2187 resists the urge to agree about the helmet, loudly. He’s growing fast, and he’s fairly tall for his age anyway, and the helmet – which had been snug when it was assigned a year ago – now cramps his head whenever he wears it.

“Twelve standards cycles, sir.” he replies, and is met with a blank look.

“What?”

“Twelve years old.”

“ _What?_ ”

He doesn’t get what the problem is, but there must be one, because the pilot turns to gape at him with something like horror.

“Nine hells, I had hoped you were just small or something,” he breathes. “How long have you been a trooper?”

Pilots like this, FN-2187 knows, are not rained like stormtroopers. They’re recruited from other lives. They don’t understand.

“Always.”

The pilot is still staring.

“I’m seventeen, and that’s young to be here, kid, that’s really young,” he babbles. “And you’re... I mean, it’s not like either of us had a choice, is it? But, damn.”

FN-2187 doesn’t have the words for what he feels, so he says nothing. To his surprise, the pilot huffs a laugh.

“We’re a case for the saint, aren’t we?”

“The what?”

“You don’t know the –” The pilot cuts himself off with a wave of his hand, sitting straighter in his seat. “No, of course you wouldn’t. Shame, because you’d need him worse than most.”

The pilot makes a gesture that FN-2187 doesn’t know the meaning of, but has gathered enough from the other First Order agents to recognise as religious in some way.

“The saint of sorrows.” he explains, more gently. “He’s a man... well, not a man, really, he’s a vision of a man that appears to kids in the galaxy when they’re ‘badly used’. That’s what my folks told me. That he tells the kids not to cry and tries to help them.”

The fantasy of comfort that the pilot is describing is one that FN-2187 has to consciously resist the pull of. _There is no man_ , he reminds himself, _that will come and try and help. Not here. It’s a foolish belief._

The systems are coming back online, enough so that soon the surveillance will be fully functional again, if it wasn’t already.

The pilot speaks rapidly, as though he’s trying to get the words out before anyone in command might hear them. Against his better judgement, FN-2187 hesitates just a few seconds longer to put on his helmet.

“I thought I saw him, the night before I was ordered to report to work for the Order. I was dreaming, and there was a man, dressed all weird, and he bowed to me.”

The blinking red light that means _we are watching you_ sputters back into life: FN-2187 all but jams his helmet back onto his head, and the pilot falls immediately silent.

They do not speak for the rest of the journey back to base. FN-2187 hears, as he is marched in the other direction, the pilot’s garbled explanation of the crash, and then everything remains coldly, clinically, silent until he is questioned by his lieutenant.

FN-2187 spends this time wondering, more obsessively than he ever has about anything, about the saint.

 

*

 

He’s spent two weeks in denial, going about his training and his duties and telling himself that the fact that he hasn’t seen the young pilot since the day of the crash doesn’t mean anything, necessarily. The man might still be alive, somewhere, just somewhere other than the very restricted route around the base FN-2187 has clearance for.

Once a month, the stormtroopers are called by their unit to a speaker to listen (and memorise, and if you can’t memorise then to hope like hell that no one orders you to recite) the new orders and notices. The FN units’ speakers are by a massive plexiglass viewing panel, and although they have to keep their posture as stiff and still as statues, FN-2187 knows he’s safe to move his eyes out to watch the distant stars and planets without noticeably moving his head. There’s junk floating out by the window, spoiling the view.

The cold, dispassionate voice on the comm begins to read out the roll of cadet troopers chosen to progress to the next stage in their training, and FN-2187 hears them begin on the FN roll, and should be – invisibly, of course – excited to hear his own designation listed among them.

It’s just that he’s staring at the glassy-eyed body of the young pilot floating with the trash.

 

*

 

He knows better than to stay awake in a sleep-shift; it’s against the rules, and punishable by removal of rations, under the logic that a trooper who insists on weakening themselves should be made weak enough to suffer. They’re past the age when cadets are simply drugged into unconsciousness for the required five hours, but most of his peers are still exhausted enough to collapse the moment they’re in their narrow bunks – unfortunately, FN-2187 has always had a more powerful imagination than his commanders have ever approved of. A good trooper would have forgotten the pilot. A good trooper wouldn’t have spoken to him in the first place.

FN-2187 wonders if the pilot saw the saint before he died.

And then he freezes up, because there’s someone moving through the lines of bunks. He can hear the sound of their boots, very faint but audible against the metal floors, and their breathing, out of rhythm with the snores FN-2187 has been familiar with his entire life.

He screws his eyes tight shut rather than be caught blatantly awake.

“I’m not angry with you, child,” says a close voice, as soft as a whisper. “You don’t need to pretend.”

FN-2187 doesn’t open his eyes, doesn’t question who it is standing by his bed. _It can’t be_ , he thinks. _I’m dreaming._

“That doesn’t mean I’m not really here.”

He feels the weight, very real, as the stranger settles on the end of his bunk, and cautiously, _cautiously_ opens his eyes just a fraction. It’s dark in the bunk room, but the figure seems to give off his own light; he’s too foreign in appearance for FN-2187 to have imagined, dressed in strange, too-loose layered clothing, his hair wavy and _far_ longer than a regulation cut, to his shoulders.

“Do you have a name yet, little one?”

_Yet?_ FN-2187 shakes his head: he has a designation, and it’s not the same. The man nods a little sadly, like he understands. He reaches out and touches FN-2187’s hand, and the touch is not warm, but it is surprisingly solid.

“I’m so sorry that you are a witness to this death.” says the saint. “You’re kinder than they intended you to be – in a time gone by, you would have been training to be a...”

The saint trails off, an expression of embarrassment tightening his features as he realises that FN-2187 won’t know the word.

“A warrior of good.” he says instead. “Not this.”

FN-2187 still doesn’t quite dare to speak, fearful somehow that his words might disturb the other cadets where the saint’s haven’t. But the saint seems to sense the question on his mind.

“You’re afraid of the new training?”

He nods, hesitant to do so; fear is the mark of a trooper who won’t survive, and in FN-2187’s experience _are you afraid_ isn’t so much a question as a trap.

“Don’t be, child. You’ll be okay. You could be great – if you wanted to, you could be an officer. But you won’t.”

FN-2187 tries his best to squash the flare of guilt that rises in him – his lieutenant wants him to try and be a commander, he knows that, but the thought of behaving to others as his superior officers do to him repulses him.

“That’s okay.” consoles the saint, soft and surprising enough that FN-2187 wonders if he has actually, finally, been driven mad by the Order. “You care about other people, little one, that’s a good thing.”

_Not for a trooper._

“Maybe not. But you won’t spend the rest of your life as a stormtrooper.”

The saint’s hand tightens marginally on FN-2187’s, enough that he starts to take this deadly seriously, to forget for a moment that this is almost definitely a dream.

“I can’t help you now. I couldn’t save that poor man,” says the saint, grim. “I can’t intervene like that. But listen to me – there will be another kind pilot you can trust, and when you know you have to make your escape, find him. Do you understand, little one?”

FN-2187 nods, frantically, something simultaneously like elation and panic rising in the pit of his stomach. The idea of escape hasn’t _existed_ in his universe, he hasn’t allowed it to. But here is a promise that, some day, he will.

“Sleep.” says the saint, and FN-2187 feels himself growing tired at last – somehow not with the usual heavy-limbed, brain-numbing exhaustion, but with a kind of warm and safe feeling – as the man watches him, his gaze still soft and still sad.

“Wait,” he whispers, barely more than a breath. The saint looks at him curiously.

“What is it, child?”

“Why... why didn’t you...”

His eyes are closing involuntarily, but he still feels the saint gently touch the back of his hand again.

“Why didn’t I come to you when you were scared before?”

He nods, and slips into unconsciousness as he distantly hears the saint reply,

“I did.”

 

*

 

FN-2187 dreams for the first time in years, and the dreams are stunningly vivid.

He’s sat curled up, small as possible, considerably smaller than he is now, in the corner of his bunk, not even trying to restrain the tears that flow freely down his cheeks.

“Don’t cry,” comes a gentle voice next to him, and when he looks up he can see through the figure sitting next to him to the other, empty, bunks behind. “It’s okay.”

Little FN-2187 nods dutifully.

“They’re gonna fix me.” he says, his voice too high and too unsteady.

“There’s nothing to fix.” objects the saint, putting his hand up to the small boy’s close-shaven hair as though he could somehow protect him like that. “You’re not a tool to be tuned, you’re a person.”

Shakily, the boy wipes at his face with the heels of his hands.

“I’m a stormtrooper.”

The saint looks sad, and little FN-2187 doesn’t respond, because he’s used to that expression on his comrades’ faces.

There’s the sound of heavy boots in the corridor outside, and little FN-2187 gasps sharply, looks to the saint with terror.

“I’ll be with you.” promises the saint. “I won’t leave you. It’ll be alright.”

And then a trooper is standing by the door, and FN-2187 is taken to reconditioning, and he forgets almost everything of the past week.

And he forgets the saint.

The dream changes, and he’s older; he knows when he is this time, two years ago, when he failed in a simulation exercise so catastrophically that he was dragged before his lieutenant and reconditioned again, off-schedule and unexpected. FN-2187 was told afterwards that he was lucky not to be shot.

He’s in a cell, because there had been nowhere else to put him, and he’s wretchedly miserable but he knows better than to cry.

“You’re very brave.” says a voice that is, by now, familiar.

FN-2187 startles, and the saint raises his hands in surrender, half-swamped in his too long sleeves.

“Don’t be afraid, child, I wouldn’t hurt you. I couldn’t.”

The saint stays very still and allows FN-2187, cautiously, to examine him, to put a hand out and carefully touch his shoulder and feel the tangible-not-tangible strangeness of his skin.

“What are you?”

The saint smiles at his curiosity even in this terrible situation.

“A ghost, kind of. I came because I felt that you were scared.”

“I’m _not_ scared.” FN-2187 insists, without thinking. At the saint’s look of concern, he relents and slumps down a little. “It’s just – reconditioning hurts, I think. I can’t remember it but I remember...”

A flash of half-memory stutters through the dream, of his small body held in a machine, of brilliant white light that made his eyes burn, of a scream that might have been his.

FN-2187 sees the saint repress a shudder as he comes closer, feeling the horror of the memory as well.

“What you did was brave,” the saint tells him, and the FN-2187 in the dream can’t work out if he feels proud of not, but the FN-2187 having the dream can’t remember _what he did_ to be sent to reconditioning at all. That’s the point of it. “You were right to stand up for that boy, even if they’re going to punish you for it.”

There’s something achingly sincere in the saint’s expression.

“That’s the problem with the galaxy. If more people stood up for each other, maybe this Order wouldn’t have...”

_Treasonous talk_. FN-2187 covers his ears with his hands, and the saint stops himself guiltily, waits until FN-2187 slowly lowers his hands to speak again.

“You’ll live through this.” he says, gently. “I promise.”

“ _I_ will.” FN-2187 hears himself whisper, afraid to show the resentment in his voice too loudly. “They decommissioned FN-2270.”

“I know.” _I was with him_ rests, unsaid, in the saint’s face.

“It wasn’t even his fault he failed the simulations-” FN-2187 blurts, bitterly. “-his blaster was faulty, and no one gave him a chance.”

“You did as much as you could without endangering yourself. Your commanders failed him, not you.”

‘Failed’ is, perhaps, an understatement, but it’s the most the cadet FN-2187 will accept as not outright treason. He buries his face in his hands, hiding his expression just as he will soon have to hide it behind a helmet, and waits.

The saint stands vigil over him until he is taken away.

And then they make him forget.

 

*

 

FN-2187 wakes at the end of sleep-shift with a strange new feeling of resolve, and he reports to his new training obediently, but with a small, defiant smile disguised behind his helmet.

He keeps the prophecy private and precious in his heart. When the time comes to escape, there will be a kind pilot.

FN-2187 will be ready.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates next Wednesday with Rey.


	2. Rey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The scavengers say that ghosts come howling out of the sand dunes to eat little girls like her in their rage, and Rey had felt the anger and the darkness radiating from the ghost’s blaster, overpowering and terrifying, and it had felt enough to swallow her up._
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  _Ghosts do_ not _help little girls breathe in a sandstorm._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's not made entirely clear, but Rey is meant to be nine years old in this section.

Outside, the sandstorm rages so powerfully that Rey can feel the vibrations of it in the floor. It smells foul, the air acrid and stinging in her eyes and her throat whenever she tries to breathe, and it mutes the sunlight that she relies on for her days’ schedule, stranding her in a terrifying, confusing twilight.

Rey had managed to cover the water bin when she heard the storm coming, but there was no time and no possible way to barricade the entirety of the abandoned AT-AT that she lives in, no matter how desperately she tried: scavengers have been at it, and even if they hadn’t, rust has eaten holes in the metal walls. The crash as the water bin falls is loud enough for Rey to hear it even lying under the bed with her arms wrapped around her head.

She  punches the floor and screams with frustration and fear and hurt, unable to hear herself over the still-wild storm, or the inevitable sounds of the cover coming off the tank and the glug of the water washing into the ground. Water is a scarce resource. It’s precious; she knows that all too well. And now it’s soaking into the floor and the sand, where it’ll only make her scraped-together home more fragile.

Rey regrets the screaming very sharply when she tries to inhale again and ends up with a mouthful of sand and dust particles, and chokes.

Another gust of wind: the tattered blanket from Rey’s bed flies forward and obstructs her view so that she can only see flashes of the dusty, angry air through the holes as it flutters frantically. It makes her think of trying in distress to take cover in tents when the storms had hit earlier in the year, before she had found her own place to hide out – it makes her remember the terror that her shelter would simply be ripped away, even if those storms had been nowhere near as violent or as long as this one.

Rey panics blindly, unable to even scream.

And then there’s a faint voice through the storm, somewhere close; she can’t make out the words at first, but the fact that there are words at all snaps her out of her alarm. Rey has been on Jakku for four years – almost half her life – and in that time, she’s never even heard of anyone crazy enough to go wandering about in a storm. If they’re that mad, are they dangerous?

“ – the blanket,” urges the voice, desperation at its edges. “Take the blanket, wrap it over your mouth!”

Rey scrabbles for it, not knowing exactly why she obeys other than that the advice sounds more likely to help than doing nothing at all. The rags are neither thick nor clean, and she fumbles with them trying to find a way to wrap them safely around her face – but as she does, she sees an indistinct figure, feels odd, light touches on her hands, guiding them.

Whoever is helping her must be an alien of some kind, she supposes; not a human alien like Rey, since their hands are so cold. _It must be nice to have cold blood in a place like Jakku_ , she thinks, trying her hardest to stop spluttering. The stranger laughs quietly, surprised, and she wonders if she managed somehow to say that out loud in between coughs.

She tries to speak for real, and hears the voice again, less urgent this time.

“Shh,” they say. “Shh, don’t exert yourself, you still breathed in a lot of dust. It’s safe under there, you just stay there for the moment.”

Rey lies and gratefully breathes properly again, and as she does, the stranger seems to solidify. He’s a man, a human – or a humanoid, at least, which surprises her – crouched low on one knee to see under the bed: his brow is crumpled with care, which only deepens when she closes her eyes for a moment, exhausted by the stress.

“It’s safe,” he promises again. Rey _knows better_ : she’s learned a sharp, defensive cynicism working for Unkar Platt. And yet, the stranger’s expression is so sincere that she doesn’t doubt him. “Everyone else is busy with the sandstorm too. You can sleep if you need to.”

When Rey shifts, fearful somehow that the stranger, the first person in months to be kind to her with no motive that she can figure out, will be gone when she wakes up, he sits up, turning to face away from her.

“Don’t worry,” he tells her. “I’ll keep a watch for you.”

The sand is uncomfortable where it has been blown beneath her, and against her skin where it’s gotten somehow between the layers of cloth she wears, so Rey doesn’t fall asleep immediately. Instead she watches as the man assumes a crosslegged position and folds his hands in his lap – a wave of unexpected calm comes over the both of them, and she feels her tense little frame relax, filled with unfamiliar peace.

 

*

 

Rey doesn’t know precisely when she closes her eyes, but he’s still there when she opens them again, outlined by a strange light against the dark – real dark, night-time dark, not the frightening half-light of the storm. She can feel the cold now, but that’s okay. In fact, it’s refreshing in the face of the sun’s scorching summer heat.

She wonders, with a hint of concern, whether the stranger is suffering in the night with his already-cool skin.

“Don’t worry about me,” he says, turning to glance at her. His face is young – scarred, over his left eye, but kind. “I’m fine. Are you alright, little one?”

“M’okay.”

Rey scoots out from under the bed and dusts herself off; standing, she’s slightly above the eye-level of the stranger, and it makes her smile that such a tall grown-up would stay sitting and look up at her. When she stomps on the floor, the pressure sensors snap back into their right place and strips of what would once have been emergency lights begin to glow on what was once the right wall, her ceiling. Other scavengers stripped out the power cells from her home long before she was even born, but the emergency lights are solar powered – and if there’s one thing Rey has a lot of, it’s sun.

“Thanks for helping, but who are you?” she asks, not sure if she’s being polite or rude, and not caring all that much. “Why’d you help?”

The stranger seems to think hard about the question for a minute.

“I have a lot of names. And... I helped you because you were too little to be all on your own.”

“Oh.” Rey is momentarily stumped. “Well. I only have one name.”

He nods, seeming to accept that.

“It’s Rey.”

“Nice to meet you, Rey.”

He doesn’t offer his own name for her to use in return, although the slight twitch of his lips makes her think maybe he knows that she was looking for it. Rey huffs in frustration at him, and turns to kick at sand – it’s covering the floor in drifts, as though the desert has invaded her home.

“And I’m not so little, anyway.” she tells him, bluntly. “I’ve lived alone for months. I can do it, and it’s better than...”

Better than the tents where the very poorest scavengers had huddled, for certain, because they hadn’t liked Rey and she hadn’t liked them back, but worse than Unkar Platt’s house. He had been mean, and he had made threats, and kept her hungry enough to hurt. But at least there had been solid walls around her and a vaguely protective adult presence around. For all that he had mocked her small, fragile human form, she knows that he knows enough about humans to know that eight years old isn’t a grown-up: he had said it was grown-up enough not to be hanging off him like a parasite, though. And Rey didn’t have a choice about getting kicked out.

“Are you from Jakku?” she asks, instead of talking about Unkar Platt. If the stranger has come from another scavenging settlement then maybe he would want to work together with her – Rey has been told she has a nose for the best scrap, but she thinks of it more as an ear, like she can almost hear the stories that the junked old ships and weapons have to tell; the only problem is that she isn’t big enough to carry most of it, or strong enough to dismantle it.

To her disappointment, he shakes his head.

“I’m a traveller,” he explains. “I visit a lot of planets.”

For a moment Rey’s heart soars, imagining with delight the sensation of freedom, of flying, of discovering new places and beautiful things that _aren’t_ scrapped and rusting yet. And then it falls again, because she knows that she can’t have that, not without risking everything. _I have to wait for them to come back. They’ll come back for me. But I have to wait here._

“When I was your age I worked on a desert planet too.” says the stranger, softly. He sounds angry, underneath the softness, like he’s not happy to remember it. “I had my mom to protect me, though.”

“I _have_ a mom.” Rey snaps. “She’s just not here.”

She feels herself flushing red, waiting for him to respond in the way that Unkar Platt’s workers and the scavengers always do, mocking her and asking how terrible a daughter she could possibly have been that her parents would leave her in a place like Jakku, asking when they would be back, saying that they must have hated her, or worse, that they never existed at all.

The stranger doesn’t say that. He doesn’t say anything. When she glances at him over her shoulder, she thinks that he looks like he’s sad, but not that he doesn’t believe her; like something else that Rey doesn’t understand. She turns back to him, and as she does, she realises that there are strange markings on his face that weren’t there before – but, wait, no there aren’t. Those markings are the unfamiliar-familiar lettering on the wall of the AT-AT, written in some alphabet other than Aurebesh that Rey doesn’t know. (Not yet, anyway. She wants to learn.)

“Are _you_ here?” she asks, suddenly excited, delighted at having solved the puzzle. He blinks at her in confusion.

“What?”

“You’re transpa- translucent, and blue-ish. Like a _hologram_.”

It makes sense, to her young mind at least. A powerful hologram projector might be able to make him appear through the wall of her home, and... well, just because she’s never heard of a hologram that had a physical presence, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Platt calls Jakku _the_ _arse-end of the universe_. It’d be no surprise to her to learn that technology has advanced far, far beyond anything Rey has ever seen.

But the stranger shakes his head, almost apologetically.

“No, child. I’m here with you, I promise.”

Oh. She scowls, just at being wrong.

“Then why–”

“Why am I all blue-ish?” He smiles at her, and the tone of the tease isn’t cruel at all – Rey, against her instincts, finds herself smiling slightly back. “It’s a long story.”

“I was thinking maybe you were a different species. Than me, I mean.”

 “A fair theory. But I’m as human as you are, Rey – or, I was, once.”

For a few seconds, Rey stares at the stranger with nothing more than an open-mouthed childish curiosity, stunned. And then:

“Bantha-shit.” She stamps her foot on the ground, racking her brain for an even harsher profanity. “ _Rancor_ -shit!”

Somehow the stranger doesn’t seem surprised; much to her chagrin, he even looks amused, even as he winces at her language.

“So you don’t believe me.”

“You are _not_ a ghost!”

“I sort of am.”

“Uh-uh!”

 _He can't be a ghost_. The kind of ghosts Rey knows are angry, vengeful spirits of the desert, remnants of the battles she knows were fought here before she was born, or fallen soldiers even older than that. She hadn’t believed the stories at first, had yelled at the other scavengers that they couldn’t frighten her themselves and they couldn’t frighten her with ghost stories – but then there had been the flash of someone else’s memories behind her eyes when she’d touched an old Rebellion blaster, and she’d felt _fire, fury, terrible light scorching the retinas and the noise of soldiers yelling on both sides, aching muscles raising the blaster and the sole, all-consuming thought that if they could take down another Imperial bastard then dying would be worth it_ and after that...

Well, after that she’d believed it. The scavengers say that ghosts come howling out of the sand dunes to eat little girls like her in their rage, and Rey had felt the anger and the darkness radiating from the ghost’s blaster, overpowering and terrifying, and it had felt enough to swallow her up.

Ghosts do _not_ help little girls breathe in a sandstorm.

“I know you’ve never heard of a ghost like me,” says the stranger, almost as though he can see right inside her head. “But if we can be shards of anger in the force, surely we can be shards of good too?”

Rey only scrunches up her little brow and continues to glare at him, not understanding.

“The force isn’t real, and neither are wizards.” she tells him, firmly. “Platt says so.”

“It’s – they’re not wizards, they’re J-” the stranger mutters, half-distracted, then cuts himself off.

The stranger, tilting his head at her like a clawbird, considers his angle and changes tact; he smiles carefully, so she doesn’t back away when he puts a hand out. He holds it there, palm upwards. After a cautious moment she reaches out too.

Their fingertips meet and for a second Rey isn’t sure if he’s really there or not, if she can feel the resistance of his hand against hers – and then she passes right through him with a little squeak of surprise, as though he’s nothing more than steam rising from spilled water on hot sand.

“A hologram is the image of a person who is a long way away,” he reasons, his voice steady even as the apparition of his hand wavers under her curious touch. “I’m the image of a person who lived a long time ago. There’s not that much difference.”

“So I wasn’t all wrong.” she murmurs, fascinated. He’s still cold, and she thinks that maybe if he really wanted her to be able to touch him, she could. But he’s _not there_ despite how _there_ he is.

“You’re very clever,” he tells her, genuine, and unwavering with it when she meets his eyes, wondering if he’s joking. “The way you pick over the parts here – you could repair junk, or build entirely things, if you want. Even if just to help you.”

“Really?” she blurts.

Unkar Platt probably wouldn’t let her sell anything she built, but the idea is exciting; not only something that would make her scraped-out life easier, but something to do with her hands and her busy mind, with the little free time that she mostly spends just sleeping and drawing shapes in the sand.

The stranger’s expression warms and he nods, withdrawing his hand from hers to bury it in his sleeve again, seemingly a habit.

“Really. I was a mechanic, of a sort. I should know.”

A mechanic and a traveller – it’s a simple existence, likely, but one that sounds right out of a fairytale to Rey, with a skill of value to everyone in the whole entire galaxy and freedom to go anywhere.

But then she thinks of what she knows, the only thing she knows, about grown-ups that lived a long time ago.

“Were you a soldier too?”

Her voice is as grave as she can make it, and the stranger’s smile melts away.

“Yes.”

She appreciates his honesty, at least. And she juts her chin out and refuses to regret asking even as a twisted expression of bitter sadness comes over his face.

“Lots of people have to be, and almost everybody where I was caught up in it. But not in the war that you’re thinking of.”

_Lots of people._

“Will I?”

Her voice is scarcely more than a whisper – he doesn’t look like he wants to answer, but he does.

“You’ll fight, one day. Sometimes it’s what’s right.” says the stranger, just as quietly; his tone is not one of prophecy but of assurance. “But not for a long time, and you’ll know how by then.”

She shivers. It’s not all that much of a comfort, but he seems to know that, and he kneels up closer to her when – despite her still-defiant expression – her lip wobbles, just a little.

“Don’t cry, child,” he whispers. “You’ll be an adult. It’ll be okay.”

All she can think about are the feelings that had come pouring from the blaster.

“Will I be scared?”

“You’ll be brave.”

The stranger stands, dusting off his knees, and Rey smiles to see that the sand, at least, knew that he was there and stuck to him.

"Come on," he says, smiling too. "I have a surprise."

He walks over to the door - she hesitates, and he shakes his head.

"A good one, I promise. The storm is over."

When Rey - with some difficulty, because the hatch was stiff anyway and now its hinge mechanisms are full of sand - wrenches the door open and steps outside, buried just feet away, still softly glowing, is what looks like an almost  _brand new power cell._ She shrieks, delighted; the sandstorm must have blown it here, she wouldn't even be stealing it, and the price Platt would give her for it will buy weeks of rations, enough to eat properly every day, and enough for wires and little electrical parts too. It doesn't occur to her to keep the cell - it's worth more than Rey could ever use it for, likely, and besides, she doesn't need power. She needs food.

Her giddiness at this bright little promise of security is enough that she doesn't notice the stranger's brows knit into a frown. He's looking to the horizon, but he looks down quickly when she turns back to him, breathless with happiness.

"You should sell that before the day gets hot," he suggests, and there's something, just something under his words, that catches her attention. "If you're going to carry back all the things you can buy with it."

But Rey is tired, and overjoyed, and she feels as small as she only sometimes remembers she is. So she doesn't question him about the strange feeling that his words give her.

"Will you walk with me?" she asks instead, tucking the power cell into her boot. He nods.  _What are the scavengers going to think_ , she wonders vaguely,  _about the lonely off-worlder girl having a ghost for a friend?_   In a way, it'll probably seem right to them.

Some half-remembered, childish instinct tells her to take his hand, but she doesn't try, because she doesn't want to slip through him. Rather than that, he walks beside her, following - the familiar patterns of the dunes have been disturbed, but she still knows the way. Platt's settlement is the only one for klicks.

Fairly soon, though, she has an answer to what people will see when they look towards the stranger; light begins to creep across the sky with the sunrise, and as it does the image of him becomes less and less clear, like the old paint on the speeders, curling and dulling into nothing under the harsh sun. It's scary, for a moment - _but he's not dying_ , she thinks.  _Just moving on_. There's no point begging him not to; she's learned that grown-ups will leave, no mater what she wants. Rey just watches the sad little smile he gives her until it disappears entirely.

 

*

 

It takes Rey  _forever_ to lug the parts to build a speeder home, not to mention all her rations and the heavy water, tied up behind her in a big net. The look on Unkar Platt's face had made it all even better though - until his blind shock had been replaced with the usual mix of derision and disgust and suspicion, because he thinks she's probably a thief - and she doesn't care, because she doesn't have to work today (or tomorrow orthe next day) if she doesn't want to, and the stranger had told her she was smart enough to build something herself and she _believed_ him.

Except when she gets home, it's not the same.

The AT-AT looks wrong as soon as she gets within sight of it, but for a moment Rey tells herself that it's only the storm damage, that she couldn't see well enough in the early morning darkness to notice the differences. Only, the thing is that her bed wasn't half-smashed, lying on the ground outside when she left.

 _The storm didn't do this_ she realises, and sees red, for a moment indescribably angry and betrayed, so that all she can feel is her eyes stinging and her short nails digging into her palms as her hands squeeze into fists. She should have known not to listen to the stranger, to anyone at all no matter what their motives had seemed, because she didn't have much to begin with, but it was enough to steal, clearly -

But Rey has seen the gangs who would do this in the market at the settlement; big, dangerous sentients that the scavengers, dismissive of her even as they were, had always told her to stay away from. If she had been here when they came, then... her anger dissipates as she realises what the stranger was doing, by showing her the power cell and leading her away.

_He was protecting me._

And suddenly she can't find it in herself to hate him even a little.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #letlittlegirlsbeangry2k18
> 
> Updates next Thursday with Rose Tico


	3. Rose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Help me, help me, help me,_ Rose thinks, over and over like she could somehow send out a comm signal to someone who would care. She blinks hard.
> 
> And when she opens her eyes, there is light before her, and a man, bent low in the shallow tunnel, filled with that light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Claustrophobia warning: Rose is a trapper, a job historically given to small children in mines, which would involve sitting for very long periods in very small tunnels, with no light, in order to open and close a door to allow access to the tunnel, or to regulate air flow.

It’s _dark_. Rose’s hands are busy – _busy hands are important,_ and she knows that because Paige says so every morning, _you have to hold tight to the rope or you’ll be lost, and you have to move them or they might go numb and it’d be bad for us all_ – so she can’t wave them in front of her face, but when she shakes her head so that her hair swishes in front of her eyes she doesn’t think she can see it at all. In fairness, her hair is black. So is durite dust, though: on her first day working, when she and Paige were home and they had lit a lamp, Paige had seen her hair and cried, even though she had tried really, really hard to stop. Later, she told Rose it was because the dust had dulled the shininess.

Rose doesn't like the dark. Sometimes she thinks she can hear things moving around near her, nasty womp rats or durite slugs, but she can't move her hands to check, and shouting out for help would only make it worse - either she'd get yelled at for causing a fuss over nothing, or, worse, nobody would hear her at all and nothing would happen, and she'd still be left all alone in the dark. Paige says probably what she can hear is just water or far away explosions, deeper in the mine or up where the First Order is testing weapons on the surface. Goes to show what Paige knows about it, though, because Rose  _knows_ the constant  _drip-drip-drip_ of water on the tunnel walls, and the  _booms_ that aren't close enough here that she wants badly to cover her ears like she does when they're bombing near her house at night, but that still startle her because they make the mine shake.

Rose knows that she's lucky to be a trapper, though. Paige says she wishes Rose didn't have to be in the mine at all, but that to be a trapper, to open ventilation doors with a rope, isn't the worst job for a kid by far. Every kid on Hays Minor works as soon as they're able - that she knows of, anyway; Rose has seen rich grown-ups about, but never a kid her size that looked rich - because everybody knows that the Order takes kids who they think aren't being useful enough: really little kids, littler even than Rose, babies, to be troopers when they're big, and older kids to be pilots and techies and grunts. That's why there's barely any grown-ups on Hays Minor, except the ones that work for the Order - but Rose thinks probably there'd be kids in the mine even if there wasn't the Order. They're small enough for the tunnels and cheaper than droids.

She shifts uncomfortably. Sitting the way she is, with her back against the damp wall, is cold, but it helps her know where she is, and water would drip onto her head wherever she sits. Moving makes more of a noise than it usually should - she's confused for a moment, until she cautiously kicks a leg out and hears  _splash, splash,_ and realises the water level is not just soaking her socks for once. It's almost to her knees.

Rose gasps, pulling her knees up closer to her like that might somehow help. It's so cold in the mine, she hadn't even noticed the water level getting higher, and now there's a freezing sliver of panic rising up her throat; her hands tighten on the rope to the door - but she can hear the air whistling and howling through the gaps in it, as she always can, so it  _can't_ be that. Opening the door is her job, though, it's the only thing she's supposed to (allowed to) do, the only she can do. She wants a light so she can see what's happening and how bad it is. She wants Papa, even though he's working far away. She wants Paige. She doesn't know what to do.

So she does nothing. The water is rising slowly but noticeably now that she can't think about anything else, and, compulsively grabbing at the rope, she doesn't dare to touch the crescent necklace around her neck for comfort.  _What if it's not there_ _?_ she thinks, and hears herself begin to sniffle, even though she knows there's no point crying. If it is there, it's warmed up to her body temperature, because she can't feel it -  _but I can't feel it so I don't know for sure and what if that means I lost it?_

Trembling, still wishing for a light, she takes a deep breath and begins to sing. The song is old, but some of the words, the ones her sister and the other girls sing to each other, half-sweet and half-joking, are new. Paige says they've been changed, anyway, but that at least 'empire' and 'order' have the same rhythm. What Rose knows she's thinking but isn't saying is that it's lucky that 'Resistance' doesn't fit so that the girls have a reason not to say it, because if a trooper overheard them there'd be hell to pay.

"Oh, when I joined the Order, as it mi-"

 _Crash!_ There's an explosion in the mine, far closer than it should be, and she jumps violently. Her voice is too thin, reedy and unsure, hiccupping and scared. It doesn't sound like when Paige sings it at all, but she makes herself keep going.

"A-As it might be yesterday, I kissed a Corellian girl before I marched away -"

_CRASH!_

Rose presses herself into the wall, as far from the rising water as she can get, and looks desperately around herself with unseeing eyes.  _Help me, help me, help me help me help me help me help me help me help me_ , she thinks, over and over like she could somehow send out a comm signal to someone who would care, Paige or the mine supervisor or Papa.

She blinks, hard.

And when she opens her eyes, there is light before her, and a man, bent low in the shallow tunnel, filled with that light.

“Don’t cry,” he says softly, not nearly so loud as the explosions but still shocking to her, after so much silence; his light, too, isn’t particularly bright, but bright enough that she recoils a little. “It’s going to be alright. Can you stand up?”

All Rose can do is stare, frozen-up with fear.

“That’s okay, little one.” The man has long hair, loose and scraggly and not done up in a braid like Papa’s long hair – it’ll get dirty and wet in the mine, she knows, just like hers, even if it isn’t yet – and a face like Papa’s too, with a red line like a cut across his eye but a look like he wants to do good. “What’s your name?”

She still doesn’t want to speak.

“Should I just say ‘little one’, then?”

Rose shakes her head quickly. _No. I’m not a baby_ , she thinks, _I’m old enough to work_.

That thought is a defence she’s learned, just like the way that she always sticks close to her sister near the stormtroopers is, like she’s saying _I have a family and they love me and you can’t steal me away because I’m already wanted_. The First Order say they only take unwanted children. They lie.

“I know, petal, but you shouldn’t be. It’s dangerous down here.”

He looks worried, but her fear breaks and she giggles, just a little. _Not a petal_ , she thinks, slightly hysterically happy at his accidental joke. _A flower._

The glowing man smiles back at her, even still hunched over uncomfortably as he must be.

“A flower? What kind of flower?”

On Rose’s birthday every year, she wakes up to a single rosebud; last year, it had been on her pillow, and she had sneezed, and Paige had laughed so hard that she fell off her own bed watching it. In her mind, she pictures the dark Malreaux roses that are Paige’s favourite, that she has always imagined she was named for, unfurling and opening into a rich and lovely blossom.

“Rose?” asks the glowing man, warmly enough that he distracts her from the way the dirty water suddenly splashes and seems to inch up her small body even faster than it had before. “That’s a pretty name. And how old are you, Rose?”

She hesitates, and then carefully unfurls the fingers of one hand from the rope, stiff as they are. It’s okay, even despite the scary feeling of _breaking the rules, panic, don’t don’t don’t there’ll be trouble_ , because the hand is still _busy_ and she’s still touching the rope and still half-holding it – or at least, Rose tells herself that as she briefly holds her hand out.

Five fingers are splayed wide, extended, then returned hurriedly to the rope. Rose wonders, suddenly, if the glowing man can see by his own light, and counts off the fingers on the rope in a whisper.

“One, two, three, four, five,” she breathes, touching each of them in turn, and notices as she tightens her grip on the rope again that it’s wet all the way through now, no matter how high she tries to hold it. He nods, understanding, and his voice is gentle with concern and pity.

“Five years old isn’t big enough to be alone in the dark and the water.”

Rose doesn’t mean to – she doesn’t want to get taken for the Order, she _doesn’t_ – but she can’t help but agree; her shoulders tremble and she nods her head, able to see when her overgrown bangs fall into her eyes now.

“Shh, don't cry." he comforts, slightly distracted as he glances towards the door and then back at her. "Do you want me to take you to your sister?"

The wave of relief that comes over Rose is so palpable that she cries harder, and the glowing man looks worried for a few seconds before he works it out.

"Yes," she gasps, as loud as she can despite the way her voice catches in her throat. The man seems to think for a moment.

"I know it's not what you've been told," he says, slowly. "But you need to tie up that rope really tight, so it doesn't come loose, and then leave it. Do you think you can do that, Rose?"

_But... the miners are..._

He only shakes his head grimly.

Her breath hitches - the mine supervisor is a big man, bigger than the glowing man or Rose's Papa, and Paige says he's good to the miners and he doesn't make them work until they fall down dead like in the Carbonite mines one town over, but when he had put Rose's name down on the list of trappers he had treated her like she was nothing more than a teeny tiny bug to be squashed if she abandoned her post, and she's so small and he's so big that he probably could. But the glowing man wants to _help_ , and the water is still getting higher and she _wants Paige_. So she gives a jerky nod and begins to stand, both hands still clutching the rope as she braces her back against the wall, and feels for the hook that she can only just about see by the glow.

She feels the glowing man's gaze on her very intently as she makes the knot. Her hands are clumsy, with her little, frozen fingers, but she knows this well: she's practiced with Paige.

"Good job," he says, and hearing the smile in his voice, she can't help a little swell of pride. "You have a good trick for details, Rose."

Rose takes one more look at the water - now that she's standing, it's well above her waist, but not so close as to drown her yet.

"We should run." she whispers, trying to sound braver than she feels. When she puts her arms out to him as though to be picked up, he shakes his head regretfully, and offers her his hand with an odd expression, like he has to concentrate on holding on to her. It’s so cold, though, that Rose doesn’t notice anything odd about his touch.

Their gait is awkward, with the glowing man bent double and Rose’s short legs stumbling on the uneven, uphill ground that she still can’t see very well through the muck; somehow, though, she still feels safe.

 

*

 

It feels like they’ve been walking forever – she knows it isn’t forever, but it feels like it – by the time they reach a part of the tunnel where there’s only a grey ghost of half-darkness, rather than the all-consuming blackness of the deeper mine, and where the air isn’t so full of durite dust that Rose can feel it coating her tongue. A few more steps, and there’s light above her that she recognises as one of the entrance shafts. Something feels weird, and it takes her a while to realise that it’s because she’s only ever come out of this tunnel at night, shuffling along with the other kids too tired to even want to rush home. She’s only ever seen it lit by lamplight.

The glowing man crouches down so that they’re almost of a height, and she sees him very visibly force a smile.

“Paige is up there,” he tells her, his hands fiddling with his strange robe, pulling at it. “She’s worried about you.”

Rose can hear, distantly, the sound of a crowd far above her. But she doesn’t turn to them yet. She only bites her lip and looks at the man and his not-quite-happy-not-quite-sad face, her eyes still big and wet.

“What about you?”

The man, at least, doesn’t look scared of being left in the tunnel.

“I’m sorry, Rose. I can’t come with you. But don’t worry, I won’t get hurt.” When she still doesn’t move, his smile turns a little more genuine. “It’s good that you care, child, but I swear I won’t be trapped here. And neither will you.”

He looks up to the light with something faraway in his eyes.

“I know it seems a billion lightyears away, but there’s a whole galaxy that cares about people like you, Rose, and a Resistance that you’ll find your way to. I promise.”

The way he speaks is the same as when the grown-ups that Rose knows give furtive benedictions, from before the time of the First Order, in the name of the force that she’s not meant to talk about: she knows how to respond to that, and dips a bow towards him, respectful and silent and _secret_. He understands immediately, and the bow he offers back is graceful like a practiced dance, and very low.

He’s gone the moment that he stands straight, like he was never even there at all. Rose’s mouth drops open, and she can’t think of what to do as she rubs mutely at her eyes, as though she could somehow blink him back into existence as she did the first time.

And then she remembers, and goes running to the long, sturdy rope that hangs down to tunnel-level to tug hard on it.

“I'm down here! Paige!! Help me!" she yells, at the very top of her lungs, and hears an answering - if unintelligible - shout in response, faint calls for someone to turn the crank and raise the rope.

 

*

 

The explanation of what happened goes right over Rose’s head, both figuratively and literally; Paige and three other older girls talk about it over where Rose sits in her sister’s lap, but what she does hear, she barely understands. _It was a mistake_ , says one girl, and another snaps _they don’t do this shit to us by mistake, they just don’t care_ , and the first one bites back that  _they might not care about us, but they need the durite, so why would they kill their own miners?_

Of course, Rose knows who ‘they’ are. Nobody living under the Order ever doesn’t, and nobody is dumb enough to refer to them by their name when criticising them either.

“It doesn’t matter why the bomb hit the pipe,” says Paige, and she sounds exhausted, like thinking that Rose might have drowned for even a little while has drained all the energy from her. Paige is all of thirteen, and the bravest person Rose knows. She hates hearing her like this. “It just matters that it did. And... some of us got out...”

The other half of that statement is left unsaid.

There’s footsteps, and then a girl that Rose recognises, a teenager named Amaya, is standing by them with a worried, pinched expression. Amaya’s parents were officers before they died, so she knows her Aurebesh better than most of the kids on Hays Minor, and it’s her job to keep a record of going-ons for the supervisor. Some of the others don’t like her for that, Rose knows, but she’s only writing down what she sees, and she’s all but alone, like the rest of them. It’s not like she had much of an option.

“Rose,” she asks, still frowning and confused. “What happened? I can’t figure it out - you were down there with the rest of them, but none of the other tr-”

Amaya seems to see some warning in Paige’s face, because she comes to a sharp stop, but Rose knows what she’s asking.

”There was a man.” says Rose, simply. “He led me out.”

Her sister and the other miners exchange a look that Rose doesn’t understand - and neither, apparently, does Amaya.

”A... man? What kind of man?”

”A strange one. He had a tunic on, like pyjamas, and a scar, and he lit up so I could see my way out.”

A strange sort of quiet descends on the group;  a mutual understanding, but a reluctance, simultaneously, to acknowledge that.

”Rose,” says Paige, gently touching her little sister’s head so that she looks up at her. “Are you saying that... are you saying you saw the saint of sorrows?”

She seems so serious - Rose’s expression crumples.

”Is that the glowing man? Is that bad?”

“It’s not bad.” comes a shaky voice from in front of her, and when Rose looks, she’s surprised to see that Amaya has put her notebook away. The other girls are too, and Amaya looks down awkwardly.

”I’ve seen him too.” she admits, caught up in some private memory.

”Me too.” adds Paige, pulling Rose tighter to her.

”Me too,” says one of the other miners, quickly, like she doesn't know quite how to say it. “But I thought it was a dream.”

Later, being carried home in Paige’s arms, drifting half to sleep, Rose thinks to herself _if the glowing man was only a dream, then he was a very, very, very good dream indeed_.


	4. Han

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I thought the Jedi were all disbanded and dead.” Han whispers harshly, head held up defiantly. If the man expects deference, he won’t find it here.
> 
> The man’s expression does something strangely strangled, amused and hurt and caught up in memory all at once.
> 
> “They are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for mentions of and the threat of physical violence against small children by adults, somewhat more explicitly in this chapter than in previous ones - Han's situation is different from the others', as his issue isn't necessarily that he lives under an oppressive system, as much as that he's being exploited by certain individuals.
> 
> Han doesn't actually know how old he is in this chapter, but I was writing him as though he was about ten or eleven, going off his age according Wookiepedia, and Lando as approximately the same age - and, yes, I know, this is the point at which this fic departs from canon, as Han and Lando apparently don't meet until they're adults, and Lando isn't actually from Corellia. However. In terms of this making canonical sense with regards to the movies, it should still be okay until 'Solo' comes out. I still do not intend to change my headcanons of child Han and Lando already being close, though.

* * *

“I hear another peep out of either you two shits and you’ll regret you were ever born, you understand me?”

 _How are we supposed to answer you if you don’t want us talking, sleamo?_ Han thinks, and maybe too much of that venom is visible on his face, because the barman glares and cuffs him round the head, hard enough that he reckons he’d have fallen if Lando didn’t catch his elbow.

“I asked if you understood.” he snaps, more dangerous, and both boys are smart enough to nod and murmur some variation on  _yuh-huh, yessir_. They’ve had this conversation before – the cantina only keeps them around to clean up and work the tables for anyone too drunk or too distracted to figure out there’s a little hand going through their pockets, so when the clientele is of the semi-legitimate kind, Han and Lando’s duties are to stay quiet and out of the way and  _not be two dirty little distractions from the fun and the booze, or else._  Besides, tonight’s patrons are Imperials and the slimy merchants that hang around them, smelling profit, and while no stormtrooper Han has ever met has cared whether or not he was on the street, under Corellian law he and Lando should be in an orphanage.

Nobody really seems to know what kind of law the stormtroopers keep anymore, Han least of all. He and Lando have had to run from them before because one of them heard Lando say  _Republic space_  a little too loud – just a mistake, since he was only talking about what kind of currency they’d need if they were to fly away to some Outer Rim world – when he should have said  _the Empire_ , but they know Galactic law is for higher and mightier concerns than whether it’s legal or not for two kids to wipe tables (the stealing part, of course, has never been legal). And yet it’s hard to believe that Corellian law still matters when Han saw, just like everybody else, half the planet’s government hanging from nooses on the day the Clone Wars came to an end. He was only little, but he doesn’t think that sight will ever leave the back of his eyelids.

What it all means to him, anyway, is that it’s almost always safest to hide.

He doesn’t enjoy it, though. Han and Lando dream of flying, but so does every Corellian child, of every race and class – the deepest of the nine hells, reserved for traitors, is one of immobility. The difference is that for Han and Lando flying would mean a new life, a different kind of existence than just scraping by, and they know it. There’s something very different to the squashed-in, claustrophobic feel of a smuggler’s ship than to the same sensation, cornered into a cubbyhole in a filthy gambling den – if only because on a ship you know you can go anywhere, that you’re going to be gone and free, not stuck in the same tiny sector of Corellia.

The cubbyhole used to be a tunnel, Han thinks, or a cupboard or a staircase, or something like that. In any case, when the Togruta that bought the place – before the ass that hired Han and Lando owned it – and turned it into a cantina found it, she changed the interior of the building so that the cubbyhole leads to nowhere and is accessible only by a slipped plank in the corner of the back wall. Wide enough for a grown human to squeeze through, maybe, if they were slim, but small enough to be easily missed. Not shielded from most of the cantina’s noise or light, not a safe place, but just private enough that Lando uses the furthermost corner as a stash. Han prefers to keep anything precious he gets hold of in his boot, because he doesn’t tend to hoard like that (or to hold on to much of anything, really) and yet, he still adds to the small but growing stockpile of cash when he can, no matter his reservations about the security of their hiding place. It’s for the future, after all.

“I can hear you worrying from here,” whispers Lando, and Han turns his away to hide, looking out through the gaps in the wall at the light of the cantina and the feet of the few people already filtering in for the evening from the streets.

“Nah,” he lies. “You know me. I’m fine.”

Unfortunately, Lando  _does_  know him, all too well. Han doesn’t even remember how they met. His perception of time has never been exactly great – there hasn’t been anything much in his life worth remembering to mark the passage of it, not until Empire Day, anyways – but what he thinks of as one of his earliest memories is of running with his own hand, sweaty with fear or adrenaline, clinging tight to a hand clasping his right back: Lando’s hand. Sometimes he reckons they were just born like that.

“What are you worrying about?” asks Lando, disregarding the fact that Han had bothered to lie at all and pressing close. They both stiffen, suddenly, as someone moves close by and Lando realises he spoke too loudly and claps a hand over his mouth, face reflecting guilt and the same abrupt spike of fear Han feels. But the moment passes, one of many like it, and both of them breathe again.

“Nothing.” whispers Han back. “Let it go.”

Lando gives him something of a suspicious look, with those dark eyes narrowed, but drops the subject just as easily as he’d picked it up; Lando is like that. He’s adaptable, not interested in what the system is so long as he can twist it to his advantage. If he had seen a way to make being in the orphanage work to his advantage, Han reckons Lando could have stayed there – not like Han, itching to be off the ground. That thought only reminds him of why he’s unhappy, and his lips twist into a scowl.

“We ain’t getting paid today.” he mutters. They don’t get paid, really, anyway: under-the-counter (literally, some of the time) work like theirs means they can’t demand a wage, and since the boss doesn’t feel inclined to give them any, it doesn’t materialise. The two reasons they stick around are food and shelter, so what he means by that is that they won't be making any of the small profit out of customer's pockets that they can usually sequester away from the boss and keep. He'd be mad enough that they'd suffer, for sure, if he caught them withholding cash from him, and he's a nasty sort, but Han and Lando aren't so scared of him. They've worked for people who hit harder in the past. Today, though, even if he calls them out to clean while there are still some drunken sods about, Han doesn't think either of them will try anything. The hidden eyes of the stormtroopers mean they could be looking anywhere, and their blank, skull-like faces are disturbing, far too much so to consider stealing from. They're infinitely worse than the clone troopers Han remembers from the days before the fall of the Republic, because at least you knew back then that there was a face under the Mandalorian-style helmets - the same face for all of them, of course. Han isn't so sure he could say the same for these Imperials.

Somehow, he seems to have said enough for Lando to have figured out the problem, and he jumps as he feels thin arms wrap around him and the familiar body heat of his best friend lean in against his side.

"We're still gonna leave, dummy," Lando whispers, his tone fond. "Soon. And we'll have the cash for our own ship one day."

Han scowls harder, but he hugs Lando back as he does it.

"I know that."

_It's just hard to believe sometimes, is all._

Lando has always been able to sleep anywhere; it's astonishing to watch, when he just curls up and rolls over, and is out like a light in mere moments. Sometimes the peace he seems to be able to find in the least comfortable of situations is infectious, and Han can let himself be caught up in the feeling of it, and spend most of a night dreamless and calm as well. Most of the time, though, it doesn't work like that for him. His eyes are aching, and they keep drooping closed entirely of their own accord - but then there's a crash of smashed glass, and a roar of laughter, and not only does it jerk him far away from sleep, but the knowledge that _he's_  going to have to sweep up the glass in the morning gets under his skin and mixes with the frustration that he can't rest, until he's shaking with it all.

He's almost ready to cry -  _but not yet_ , he thinks, stubborn as ever - and there's a glint in the corner of his vision, blue as an Alderaani sky. Han rubs at his eyes, but it doesn't go away, and he frowns in confusion; it looks like  _light_ , nothing more, and yet it doesn't move when he edges just a little closer to the entrance to the cubbyhole, squinting. The blue flickers like a candle flame in the breeze when he narrows his eyes, and then, when Han really concentrates hard, seems to resolve itself into a humanoid shape. To his surprise, when he goes back to looking at it normally, the light doesn't change, but only begins to take on more features the more that Han stares, like a comm being tuned into a certain frequency: the figure is that of a man, tall, with one hand resting on his hip like he's used to having a weapon there. And he's looking right at Han.

Han stifles a gasp and pushes himself back, remembering the boss saying  _you'll regret you were ever born_ , and praying to all the little gods he can think of that the strange blue man doesn't do anything.

But the man shakes his head, something unusual on his face, not anger at all. Like he's sad, seeing Han shoved in a cupboard - he doesn't look at the other patrons, and nor do they look at him, and Han knows that feeling of invisibility well. He wonders if the man was a kid like him once; some of the beggars and pickpockets have to grow up to stay on Corellia, probably, he supposes, even if it often seems as though the street kids disappear, as if there's nothing but a void to the future, either space or death.

The man takes a step towards him, hesitant, as though asking for permission, and - and, well, Han must  _really_  be tired, because he swears he sees one of the stormtroopers  _walk through him_. He's standing like a soldier, so maybe, Han thinks - familiar as all kids are with a play version of the very real war he has lived through - he's waiting for a signal; when Han nods, equally unsure, the man smiles very slightly in acknowledgement and nods back. No one else seems to notice as the man turns his broad chest to slip into the cubbyhole.  _That just confirms it,_  he thinks.  _Doesn't it? Something's seriously spaced about this guy._

The man pauses to adjust the various tunics and tabards that he's wearing on top of each other - and Han scrunches up his nose in sudden and disappointing comprehension, realising  _he's a Jedi._

Nobody talks about the Jedi anymore, but he remembers them, half as storybook characters and far-off, vague figures on the news holos, serene and robed and mysterious, and half as the real-life people he'd seen occasionally when there were clone troops stationed on Corellia, or when they'd had some other business there. There had been a Jedi, years ago -  _just some batty old wizard_ , Han remembers the captain they'd worked for at the time snapping at them,  _don't you let me hear you wasting any time you ought to be working gossiping about magic tricks and hokey religions_ \- who lived by the spaceport and was studying something terribly complicated that she never deigned to explain to the likes of him, something to do with engines and that weird force crap the Jedi had never shut up about. Like all of them, she'd always seemed oh-so-superior, but Han and Lando and the other street kids had known that she was secretly alright, under it all. There was always a bed, at her place, if you were desperate, and she had started keeping a supply of bacta patches for them if they'd had a beating after not long at all. And she hardly ever called the authorities on them.

That's pretty much what he expects, from this new, weird man, kindness but distance, caring in the same absent way that Han guesses he cares that no one damages the glider nest on the roof that Lando reckons is full of chicks.

So he's surprised when the man, carefully, comes to kneel by him.

The strange man seems to be waiting for Han to speak first. Lando doesn’t stir, but then, Han reckons Lando would have slept through the overthrow of the first government if he hadn’t smelled profit in the crowds struck dumb.

“I thought the Jedi were all disbanded and dead.” Han whispers harshly, head held up defiantly. If the Jedi expects deference, he won’t find it here.

The man’s expression does something strangely strangled, amused and hurt and caught up in memory all at once.

“They are.”

Han realises, just a moment too late, that his mouth has fallen open in shock, and shuts it sharply.

“Oh.” he says, weakly. It clears up why a _Jedi_ is still walking around openly, in his robes and everything, but not why he’d bother to speak to Han at all.

“How old are you?” asks the Jedi, just as the other Jedi lady had asked them when they first came to her for help. Just as he had then, too, Han only shrugs.

“Dunno. Small.”

“I was alone when I was small, too.” says the man, as though in answer to the unspoken question of his presence, and Han doesn’t mean to bristle but he does; he juts his chin pointedly, almost protectively, at the prone form of Lando on the floor beside him.

“I’m not alone.”

The Jedi inclines his head in acknowledgement. “No. No, neither was I, really. But I often didn’t have anyone to help me.”

“S’not so bad.” Han objects. “Me and Lando can help ourselves.”

“Oh?”

“Oh yeah.” He feels a swell of pride in his chest, and grins, small and sharp and bright, and all the more confident when the Jedi’s blank Jedi face breaks into a smile in return. “We’re gonna buy a ship and fly away, to see everything in the whole galaxy.”

 _And steal as much of it as we can get our grubby little paws on_ , the unscrupulous part of Han’s mind crows, even as the rest of him shines with excitement at the thought of all the new things he’ll see and taste and touch.

“You’ll be great.” says the Jedi, something slightly distant in his eyes that belies the warmth of his tone. “A cunning mind and a trick for languages is all you need,”

“Han.” Han says sharply, filling in gap where the Jedi might have called him _boy_ or _child_. There are thousands of children, after all, but only one of him.

“All you need, Han.” the man continues, smoothly, without the smallest glance of reproval. “And you have those, don’t you?”

“I was on a ship for ages,” Han agrees, not quite boasting; somehow he feels confident enough with the Jedi not to care, most likely because... well, he’s dead, isn’t he? How is he going to take advantage of a boy like Han if he’s dead? “I know nearly all the languages people speak around the spaceports.”

So that might be something of an exaggeration - and Han doesn’t feel the need to mention that Shrike’s ship had never left Corellia’s orbit, either - but the Jedi doesn’t call him out for it.

“Even the hard ones?” teases the Jedi, and Han only just remembers not to laugh too loud.

“ _Yes._ The captain, he... wasn’t so nice, but there was this wookiee that was kind, and she taught me Shyriiwook.”

That he taught himself it so that he could talk to her would be more accurate a description; he doesn’t speak it, of course, doesn’t know of any humanoid sentient that can make those howls to any degree of accuracy, but he can understand it as easily as Basic.

Han waits for the Jedi to look suitably impressed before he continues, pretending not to see the slight look of worry directed at him when he speaks about the captain.

“We had to run, ‘cause of the captain, like I said. But I learned Bocce and lots of other useful ones, too.”  _And Lando is cunning enough for the both of us_ , he adds mentally.

“You’re all set then.” says the Jedi, voice soft but still encouraging.

There’s a strange feeling in the air: it’s as though the distinct, prickly feeling of _bad_ Han gets on the back of his neck sometimes before something truly disastrous happens has been changed to a warm, soft blanket that mutes the noise of the cantina and makes his eyelids droop, his body want to curl up. Han knows better, he really does – he knows there’s still the boss and all the imperials behind only that thin wall, and that he has nothing in the world but a few credits, only haphazardly hidden, and his best friend, who is smart but is only a child too; he knows that – but he almost feels _safe_.

“It’s okay,” murmurs the Jedi, moving away a little so that Han has room to slump down. The words, with that sincere feeling behind them, are unfamiliar enough that they confuse him back to wakefulness.

For a long moment, the Jedi simply watches him, serenity practically radiating off him as Han, contrary as always, fights sleep.

“Can I ask you something?” he says, eventually. The Jedi nods his assent.

Lando had asked a priest once, in his faltering Olys Corellisi – better than Han’s, who never saw a use for a dead language, but still not good – whether there’s any such thing as ghosts. It had been a bet, he thinks, since they’ve always had so many other, more tangibly real and pressing concerns than ghosts, and the priest had known that he wasn’t serious in asking and had been annoyed. _If a spirit had escaped from Sahsahlah or the nine hells_ , Lando had quoted back to him after the priest had been done chewing him out, _then the skies would darken and the planet would shake. So no._

Han yawns widely, and doesn’t actually get to ask his question as his eyes close heavily and the vague sense of _good_ spreads over him like a blanket pulled over his head to block out the world.

“I wish I knew.” says the man, wistful, and more than a little sad. “I’m new to this, and no one ever told me how to be a ghost. But if it’s more Jedi weirdness, the least I can do is to show compassion.”

 

*

 

There will be no evidence at all of the Jedi’s presence the next day, and Han will wonder if it was just a dream or a hallucination of his sleep-deprived mind – he won’t wonder too hard, kneeling carefully to pick broken glass from the floor while Lando mops up the sticky remains of spilled drinks, but he won’t forget it, either.

And if he hears spacer children whispering about _the saint of sorrows_ when he’s older and feels a chill of recognition run down his spine, well. That’s his own business.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit with explanation of Anakin’s presence before Darth Vader’s death: Luke at the end of The Last Jedi was able to force project a totally different version of himself across planets, right? Going with the idea that Anakin Skywalker died when Darth Vader was created (which I wouldn’t always subscribe to, but works for this) it kind of made sense to me that this pure light-side energy, in contrast to the dark side powering Vader, would maybe be released into the force and able to act, especially considering how powerful Anakin is. There’s also the possibility of ghostly time travel, if you prefer to believe that, but I had the intention of it being more that this is kind of the positive energy in Anakin travelling around the galaxy with the very single-minded purpose of helping people as he always intended to do as a Jedi, even if he wasn’t always able to in life.  
> My workload for college has dramatically increased, so it’s going to take a bit longer, but I will continue to post this and will hopefully have the next chapter done by... maybe Thursday after next?  
> Edit as if That Thursday: apparently not haha... I’m on holiday now, though, and it is happening. I’ll hopefully update soon with Cassian :)


	5. Cassian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just as he begins to move, there’s the very faintest breath of a whisper by his side.
> 
> “Wait,” comes a faint voice from the air, and when Cassian whips his head around to look there is a figure crouched beside him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're not aware, both Cassian's age and like... basic morality... means that he didn't actually start fighting for the Rebel Alliance at the age of six. Instead, he and his father actually fought *against* the Republic in the Clone Wars, which in large part is what I'm exploring here. Warnings for things relating to being a child soldier.

In the empty courtyard, the gunshots echo. They’re ear-splitting: so loud, in fact, that Cassian can’t tell where they’re coming from and finds himself too instinctively, utterly terrified to do anything more than jolt violently back, flattening himself back against the wall of the ruined building he had been using as shelter. Even as his shoulders hunch protectively and his knees buckle, bringing him low to the ground, his hands skitter spiderishly over his body, searching for the hot wet of burnt and bloody blaster wounds that, in his adrenaline-sodden state, he might not have felt hit.

When he still can’t feel the sharp, insistent pain he expects after a few seconds, he squeezes his eyes shut, holds his breath to slow the frantic beating of his heart. _Alive_ , he thinks, not sure if he’s speaking to the universe, asserting his right to live, or to himself. _Still alive._

He makes sure to look carefully for onlookers through the half-broken window of the building, once he’s recovered his breath, but there’s no one – not unusual, not in this city. It had been a stronghold of the Galactic Republic until its destruction in the last few years of the Clone Wars, and the Emperor has ordered it left to its ruin, as an example of what happens to those who stand against his might. Cassian remembers hearing about it at the time. Only, then, he and his father had been on the other side, had celebrated it as a victory; five years ago they hadn’t known any better. It had been what they had seen as the imperialism of the Republic that they had rallied against in the first place, and Cassian had only been eight years old, a soldier already but one too young to understand what he was really fighting for. That doesn’t exactly lessen the guilt at having helped to turn this place into a ghost town, though.

Still, just because he can’t see anyone, doesn’t mean that there’s no one there. He doesn’t doubt that if he had been spotted then those shots would have been very much meant for him - they haven’t found him yet, then, but they’re looking. And they’re probably still close.

Cassian feels very, very young for a moment. Then he shakes it off. It’s been seven years, he’s thirteen, and he knows how to fight: if he didn’t by now, he’d be long dead. Besides, his age had never seemed to matter to the Seps when he was fighting for them, but the rebel he had made contact with a few months back had taken one look at him, his childish face, his diminutive stature, yet to be affected by the growth spurt Cassian can feel aching in his bones, and blenched.

 _Let me help_ , he’d begged, when the rebel told him to stay away, that this was no place for a kid like him. _Please. I’ve been in these battles as long as you – longer, maybe._

The rebel in question – Davits Draven, he’d eventually said was his name, and Cassian keeps that knowledge as a mark of trust, close to his chest – had still hesitated.

 _I can be useful_ , Cassian had insisted. _I’ll go unnoticed._

And that had been true enough, for a while, long enough for him to get at least some information out. But he was clumsy about hiding it, and the Imperials had traced the signal, and followed it right back to him. He remembers that white-hot spark of panic as he’d realised they were coming for where he was squatting in an abandoned shop, how it had been overwhelmed entirely by adrenaline, and the way he’d waved a vibroblade around just wildly enough to get away, all distantly, as though it had all happened to someone else.

It’s the same vibroblade that he slips out of his tattered sleeve now – the inhabitants of this city dress much as Cassian usually does, luckily for him, in heavy, mismatched layers, easy to hide contraband under and between. He thinks it’s probably the product of living in a warzone, something to do with the instinct to hang on to everything you have left, the fact that often these clothes are the only things a person has left. He doesn’t dare switch the vibroblade on. It’s an old model, from before the Clone Wars, and its hum is gratingly loud. Safer to have a noisy one than not to have one at all, but it turning it on now would be tantamount to announcing to any stormtroopers or unscrupulous locals that might be listening _here I am! The incompetent spy! Come and get me!_

When Cassian cautiously lifts his head away from the wall and strains his ears, he can a kind of shuffling that it takes him a moment to identify as plates of stormtrooper armour shifting against each other as the troopers endeavour to move quietly. _There’s no time to freeze_ , he reminds himself, steeling his resolve by tightening his grip on the vibroblade, brushing his thumb over the switch. Perhaps, if he rushes them, he’ll surprise them again and manage to escape – stormtroopers are notoriously less rigorously trained than the terrifying spectres of the clones he’d been so afraid as of as a little kid, and they’re none too precise with their blaster bolts – and then go... to the spaceport, preferably, if he can. With a fragile sliver of hope, he squints up at the sky: there’s the faint but recognisable silhouettes of ships continuing to leave the atmosphere, and he lets a breath he wasn’t aware he was holding go, relieved. If they’d thought to stop the traffic of leaving ships they’d be able to be sure that he’s still on-planet. The more time passes, though, the likelier they’ll be to shut down the spaceport, and the harder it’ll be to get space-side.

 _I have to go now._ The thought seems to echo around his head, desperate and seemingly increasingly true the more he thinks it. _If I don’t, I’ll be dead, I have to go now, I have to go **right now –**_

He braces his legs beneath him and presses his thumb to the switch to make his blade vibrate, still thinking _now now now_ and maybe, just maybe, hyperventilating just a little bit.

Just as he begins to move, there’s the very faintest breath of a whisper by his side.

“Wait,” comes a faint voice from the air, and when Cassian whips his head around to look there is a figure squatting beside him. He stumbles back in shock, almost falls – and _little gods_ , that would be awful, it would be even more obvious than the vibroblade hum – but catches himself on the rough ferrocrete walls. There’s a long moment, interminably long, even though it can’t be more than a second, where he can only stare in horror, sure that he’s been caught. But then the figure raises a single finger to his lips, with a look of extreme urgency in his eyes, and something in Cassian understands that much, at least. This man isn’t going to kill him. Not yet. He’s hiding too, perhaps.

With a slow, fluid movement born of a mainly-irrational fear that anything too fast will somehow be loud and give him away, Cassian raises the vibroblade just enough that the man can see it, handle-up so that it can’t be read as a threat. He knows that his face is still set in a mask of panic that he can’t shift (can feel his eyes open wide and his jaw set tight) but should communicate the danger that they’re in succinctly enough, if the stranger doesn’t already know.

The man shakes his head.

“Wait.” he says again, very soft, yet insistent. So soft, in fact, that Cassian could swear that the man’s lips barely move and that the word simply appears in his mind.

There’s nothing to lose, and everything to lose, at the same time. But Cassian has missed the chance that he had been determined to take to run, and the small sounds of approaching troopers are only coming closer, so he decides to take this strange man on his word and stay back, stay low, as hidden as he can be. And to try his best not to panic.

It all seems to pass so quickly; one moment they’re _right next to him_ , so close that all they would have to do is round the wall and he’d be seen and he’d be dead, and then they’re gone, marching on past. That doesn’t mean that Cassian is safe yet, but they don’t look back, and little by little he lets himself breathe out, let go of his terror. When he glances back, there’s the same relief written large on the other man’s face as his, and the stranger leans back, shifting so that he’s sitting and not still crouched like he’s ready to run.

“Stay down a while.” says the stranger, quiet but more audible, more real, in a way. The phrase isn’t good: it reads too much like an order, and just reminds Cassian of stormtrooper raids. The stranger must realise that somehow, because he winces guiltily. “Sorry - you don’t need to be scared of me. But they’ll still be looking for you.”

There’s no malice in his voice or his demeanour, but that doesn’t mean it’s not waiting underneath. Cassian is a spy, he knows liars, and he knows how convincing they can be. He narrows his eyes.

“How did you know they wouldn’t catch me if I didn’t move?” he demands, still far too on edge.

The man is silent for a moment.

“Call it intuition.”

 _That’s not an answer_ , he almost spits back, but he knows it’s all he’s likely to get, and he can’t afford to make an enemy now. There could be anything under the layers of cloth he’s wearing, any weapon at all. Instead, Cassian just seethes quietly.

Something about the man’s strange clothing is familiar. It falls around him like farmers’ dress from the Outer Rim, but it’s more formalised, layered and tied tight like a uniform of some kind. It _must_ mean something, and Cassian feels like he knows the meaning somehow at the edge of his consciousness, but he can’t quite remember...

Until he can, and feels a cold weight of dread and a hot flush of shame in quick succession, and bows his head so that the stranger can’t see.

“Child?”

Cassian tries to swallow his words, but finds he physically can’t.

“I fought against you, at the end of the Republic,” he blurts, but the stranger doesn’t move away.

“I know,” says the stranger, with no judgement in his voice. Cassian looks up; he smiles, and it’s not happy and it doesn’t reach his eyes, but that doesn’t seem to be the point. It softens the man’s harsh features, counters the effects of the battle scar across his eye. “It’s okay. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

“But I-”

The stranger puts a hand on his shoulder before he can continue.

“One child throwing stones didn’t bring about the rise of the Empire.” he counters, more firmly, and Cassian’s objection sticks in his throat. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Cassian isn’t sure he wants to meet his gaze, so he focuses on the man’s hand on his shoulder instead. It feels off, somehow, weird. Almost weightless. It’s at this point that he realises that the light being cast by the sun shining through the broken window across from them is green in tone, not blue, and that the stranger’s weird glow is not the result of the light at all.

 _What are you?_ Cassian wonders, thinking of the way that the stranger had appeared from nowhere, and the way he knows things that shouldn’t be possible for him to know, and the way that Cassian’s natural wariness, his instinct to bolt and hide around someone new, seems somehow to have not been triggered by the stranger’s presence.

The man looks at him oddly, sadly but gently, and with no prompting.

“A ghost.” he says, as though he had heard the question that Cassian had only thought, not voiced. Cassian’s guilt swells up again, an almost tangible thing sitting on his chest and clawing up his throat.

“I’m sorry.” he croaks, but the stranger – the ghost – shakes his head.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for. I’m not angry.”

 _No, no, he wouldn’t be_. That much, Cassian remembers to be true of the Jedi, no matter what the Empire’s propaganda might try to say.

Catching the edge of his thoughts, the smile that the ghost offers him this time is more of the sort he’s used to, of soldiers sharing a joke in a tough place.

“No, Jedi aren’t meant to hold grudges. Jedi ghosts least of all.” He takes his hand off Cassian’s shoulder, holds it up, so that Cassian can see the way that the light passes through him. “We release our emotions to the force, and I am all force now. Like the echo of a purpose.”

Cassian can only stare for a few moments, transfixed on something his eyes can see but his brain can’t understand. He had felt the same way, sometimes, looking at clone troopers in the old days; so many of them, and yet only one. The world that he lives in is one of nothing but shades upon shades of grey, and even despite the deep want for stability he feels, there’s something intriguing in the paradoxes. This one feels like being in a dream, one of his few good ones.

“What purpose?” he asks, wonderful possibilities unfolding all at once in his mind – _to lead the Rebel Alliance, maybe, to rise up against the Emperor, to destroy the Dark._

But the ghost answers as naturally as breathing. (Does he breathe?)

“To help people. Innocents, like you, in danger. Children left alone and made to work.”

The simplicity of it breaks Cassian out of his staring, especially the natural, human, expression on the ghost’s face as he leans back, a little awkwardly.

“Of course, that’s not a very Jedi-like goal.”

Cassian’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise.

“That sounds like something my father would have said about the Jedi.”

The ghost smiles, slightly self-conscious in a way that Cassian does imagine that a ghost should be.

“I understood better than most of them the resentment that Outer Rim kids felt towards the Republic. The Jedi weren’t perfect. They weren’t all wrong, though.”

He can’t help but feel as though he’s going red again – he knows it isn’t what the ghost is trying to say, but he knows, he _knows_ , that they should never have fallen. Still, he’s brave as he can be, doesn’t look away; there’s a whisper of wind through the building and he swears he sees the image of the Jedi waver. _Somewhere else to be_ , he thinks, _someone more in need to help._ Cassian finds it very strange to hear himself grouped in with the innocents. Maybe that’s true, in a way, but it’s not the way he sees himself.

“Anger, fear,” says the Jedi, still with that unsure expression on his face even while his words come easily. “They can be dangerous. Lashing out like you wanted to… I understand, I really do, but it wouldn’t have gotten you anywhere.”

“Hesitation’s dangerous too.” Cassian objects.

“It’s not hesitation if it saves you.”

The Jedi’s expression goes slightly distant for a brief moment, then looks back at him.

“There’s a group of half-junked old ships out by the old square. They’re smugglers, so they’ve got some semi-decent shields, good enough to fool stormtrooper scanners, but they’re so eager to be off that they won’t check around their cargo too carefully before they go. Do you understand?”

Cassian is too stunned to speak, but he nods, frantically. He turns to look over his shoulder in the direction the troopers had marched off, but they’re long gone by now – it’ll be fairly easy to stow away and get offworld at the very least, and then from there he can contact the Alliance, and get help, and _fight on_.

When Cassian turns back, the ghost is gone, in the same sudden way that he had appeared. There’s not a trace of him in the air or on the ground, not that Cassian gives himself time to look.

For the second time that day he braces himself to move. This time, though, is the first time that he feels like has actually has something to go towards.

 

*

 

There’s a non-denominational shrine to the Force set up in a corner of the Rebel base’s hospital wing. It’s the first shrine that Cassian has ever so much as dreamed of visiting. He doesn’t quite understand why he’s even close enough to it; Davitz Draven had ushered him through to the medics for nothing more than a scratch, and when Cassian had finally managed to explain that there’s _nothing wrong with him_ they had still wrapped him up tight in a shock blanket and refused to let him leave, babbling on about trauma and stress and all the other things that the Separatists had never cared about. And so he’s here, looking at something so important to him now, that he had hated so much before.

The little altar is probably nothing at all to do with the Jedi, anyway. Not with what happened to them, and not with its odd secularism. It’s something of the sort that a Guardian of the Whills might set up.

Cassian sits quietly beside it and thinks of the ghost that had visited him, and of what he knows of what he has never practiced – saints, he’s heard it said, are beings that the superstitious believe embody some vital part of faith.

 _Please help them_ , he thinks to the saint. _The others like me and not like me. Help them too._

Cassian’s father would be furious to see him praying like this. But then, Cassian is not his father, and he is fighting for hope; hope, now, for the restoration of an improved Republic and a bettered Jedi order both.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a total nightmare for me, honestly. In the first place I found it hard to decide who to write it about, and then actually writing it was disastrous. Anyway, glad to wrap up the actual five things bit of this fic, and the next chapter should come more easily - hopefully next Wednesday.
> 
> I would also like to add that the last section may seem in endorsement of organised religion. Truth is I don't know how I feel about that in regards to Star Wars. Rose is the only other character I've written in this that has any kind of faith in the Force, but the thing is that in this universe... the Force is actually an actual thing, so it's hard to dispute. I don't know. I tried to make it more about internal conflict and rejecting the values of your parents than about any kind of real, organised, world religion.


	6. Poe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The saint doesn’t bother to quell a smile at the thought that this visibly stressed version of Obi-Wan is him at the calmest he has ever been. The expression reminds him of the one he used to receive upon executing a particularly daring stunt during his years as a padawan.
> 
> Perhaps sensing what his student is thinking of, Obi-Wan sighs, opens his mouth to speak, then cuts himself off and sighs again.
> 
> “There’s a boy,” he says eventually. “In the _tree_.”

Yavin 4 is full of ghosts.

Spirits of the Rebel Alliance gravitate here, to the scene of one of their greatest battles, and find at least some peace mingling among the souls of the local populace that had been executed under the rule of the Empire. And with their temples around the galaxy defiled, the central temple on Coruscant too polluted with darkness to even approach, many Jedi ghosts, too, find their final resting place among the constant life and water of the rainforest; they are drawn to the already towering force-sensitive sapling that has grown from the cutting of their Great Tree as a focus for their long meditations, just as that other, ancient tree had once drawn the souls of Jedi past, and there they fade quietly, serenely into the unifying force.

Well. Some of them fade away, anyway. Others are far too busy.

“Anakin? _Anakin_.”

The saint opens his eyes sharply – he had been on a moon of the Jabiim system, haunting a factory owner who has been just a little too unconcerned with the age and working hours of her smallest employees, but now finds himself where he can sense no pain, no fear, no one to save. He frowns slightly and raises his gaze to the face of the other spirit standing above him.

“What, Obi-Wan?”

His teacher – the saint has never liked the word _master_ , and now in death doesn’t care enough about what the others think of him to force himself to use it – wears the form not of the old man he had been by the time of his death, but that of himself when he really was still only a teacher, his face unlined, his hair too-long, and his robes meticulous. Anakin intimately understands why. This is the way that Obi-Wan had looked immediately before the eruption of the Clone Wars, the time in his adult life when he was most at peace. The saint doesn’t bother to quell a smile at the thought that this visibly stressed version of Obi-Wan is him at the calmest he has ever been. The expression reminds him of the one he used to receive upon executing a particularly daring stunt during his years as a padawan.

Perhaps sensing what his student is thinking of, Obi-Wan sighs, opens his mouth to speak, then cuts himself off and sighs again.

“There’s a boy,” he says eventually. “In the _tree_.”

Anakin laughs freely and unfolds himself from his meditative sitting position, enjoying, as he ever has, the sensation of standing tall over the teacher that had seemed so unreachably lofty to him when they had first met.

“Is he…?”

“Force-sensitive? No. He’s practically a force-sink. If he could feel what it was, I somewhat doubt that he wouldn’t have known better than to _climb it_.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Anakin smiles as he folds his arms inside the sleeves of his robes. “I was _fairly_ force-sensitive and I swam in the Pool of Serenity more than once.”

He doesn’t look, but he has the distinct sensation that his teacher is rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“Yes, I remember.” says Obi-Wan, with a fondness that belies what he probably intends as a chiding tone.

At the base of the new Great Tree there are drying flowers and little messages of hope scrawled on scraps of paper and left to feed the earth; there is also, incongruous among the offerings, a discarded backpack and pair of muddy shoes. The saint ignores them and nods in greeting to the others. Closest to the roots is Qui-Gon Jinn, preserved by the sudden manner of his death as he had been when Anakin had first met him, and whose eyes are creased in amusement looking up. Not that anyone had ever really admitted it to him, Obi-Wan least of all, but Anakin has learned since his death that Jinn had always been something of a non-conformist. A heretic, even, some would say. Of course this would be funny to him too. The other older Jedi ghosts – council members, scholars, generals – seem dumbstruck, between irritation and their traditional confusion at anyone treating them with anything less than reverence, but the little ones, the younglings struck down by the other, darker half of the man that the saint once was, stifle their giggles behind their hands.

The boy in the tree is very small; alone, at the present moment, as many of the children the saint encounters are, but unafraid, grinning wide and content at the challenge as he reaches for the next branch. In his bag is a lunch packed by parents who love him, and which he has forgotten about, having never gone hungry in his life. He’s too young to have even have been a padawan, if he had lived fifty years ago and had had the ability – Anakin understands what his teacher means when he claims that the child is insensitive, but still: he has yet to encounter a sentient being that is truly unaffected by the ebb and flow of the force as it moves through all things. Nonetheless, if the boy was going to be trained, he would know about it by now: Anakin senses his Rebel heritage, and knows that the last (and the first) remaining Jedi, his son, would have at least been aware of him if there was much of a chance of that.

(On a very distant Outer Rim planet, surrounded there too by the water and life that children of Tatooine and Jedi crave as equals, Luke Skywalker is training an entirely new generation of Jedi. Only a handful, so far, but each of them so full of bright hope that the saint can feel them from the furthest corner of the galaxy. Luke has heard from some of these children, and from others on his journeys, about _the Saint of Sorrows_. He suspects the truth. But his and Anakin’s intentions are not the same, and out of respect for his daughter and her son, Anakin stays far away.)

Luckily, the saint has considerable experience in making himself visible to those that would not otherwise see him.

“Little one,” he calls. “What are you doing?”

The boy squawks and slips slightly, oblivious to the rank and file of Jedi warriors that jump beneath the tree, ready to catch him. He catches himself easily, and shifts so that he is clinging tight with his hands to the branch above where he perches even while his feet dangle. The position is not particularly stable, and Anakin hears Obi-Wan hiss through his teeth in worry.

But he keeps his face as comfortingly composed as ever.

“Hello,” replies the boy, his curiosity only amplified by the tree as it echoes back to the saint in the force. “Who are you?”

 _Ah._ This planet is inhabited, yes, but sparsely, and with children few and far between this little boy is very close to all the other locals, whom he has appointed his extended family; the majority of Yavin 4’s visitors are friends of his parents too, ex-rebels. He isn’t used to strangers.

“A visitor,” Anakin lies smoothly. “Just passing through.”

“Are you a pilot?” asks the boy, his voice lighting up with enthusiasm that is immediately quashed as his eyebrows furrow. “Wait, are you here to visit a _tree_?”

“You didn’t answer me,” the saint points out. “But yes, and yes, in a way.”

“I’m just climbing.” The boy’s suddenly angelic expression and the innocent tone of his voice give away beyond the shadow of a doubt that he knows he’s not supposed to be doing what he’s doing. “I’m not hurting it.”

He’s not exactly wrong. The Great Tree is barely disturbed by his presence – in fact, the only things the boy is attacking are the sensibilities of the Jedi council, and can Anakin really, in good conscience, fault him for that?

He catches the eye of a furious and scandalised Mace Windu on the other side of the roots and looks back to the boy, scarcely resisting the urge to roll his eyes.

“That’s true,” he agrees evenly. “But you could hurt it if you go higher up where it’s delicate, or you could fall and hurt yourself. Both of you are very young.”

The boy kicks his legs at the air as he considers: around him, Anakin can feel his interest in the achievement of climbing _the special tree_ and his interest in this fascinating new person warring in his mind. But then – the tree has been here for the whole of the boy’s life, and will be here forever as far as he is aware, while the stranger has strange clothes and a presence worth investigating and a _scar_ , and may be gone tomorrow.

Unsubtly testing the waters, the boy smiles a little.

“I’ll come down if you promise not to tell my mamá.”

The boy’s mother has never seen the saint, and never will. He shrugs back, unconcerned.

“Deal.”

Something in the way he scrambles down – uncoordinated, but with a natural talent that he has yet to grow into – kindles the beginning of a vision behind the saint’s eyes. He sees sparks, flashes of what is yet to come: the boy, grown, somehow graceful as he rolls an X-Wing, pulls himself out of its wreckage, leads his squadron as though they were extensions of himself, reaches out a hand to... someone, someone that he throws his arms around, and...

The boy hops down the last few feet and stumbles to a halt in front of the saint, the way he raises his chin to grin upwards so dissimilar to the way that Anakin has seen children across the galaxy hang their heads.

“I’m Poe. Poe Leio Dameron.”

And then, quite simply, the visions slot into place. Anakin’s expression creases into a smile.

“You have a bright future, Poe. And a good name.”

It’s the name comment that Poe picks up on, and beams up proudly, although Anakin feels him wonder distantly about his future. But this is not a boy that he has to tell to be kind – he will know to help the yet-nameless stormtrooper boy sitting frightened on a ship and the scavenger girl stubbornly stuck to her desert without ever having to think twice about it, and finish the saint’s work for him, lift them from darkness.

In his peripheral vision, Anakin sees the Jedi younglings disappear from sight as they chase one another through the trees, freed from their responsibility to learn by the waythat they will never grow old. He turns from them to gesture towards a stream to Poe.

“Do you want to see a trick with the water, child?”

 _Only if I can ask you questions while you show me_ , he hears the boy think, and tampers down a laugh.

“I can’t stay long, but I can make it float.” he elaborates, enjoying the way that Poe’s eyes light up, and he jogs to keep up with Anakin’s long strides.

The galaxy’s sorrows can wait. Around the ghost and the little boy, the other spirits begin to fade again, and the rainforest is once again set to peace.

For the moment, it is quiet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poe is seven years old in this. The 'Leio' thing is my personal headcanon, I just think it's cute. I'm sorry this is late, but of course, my exams come first - glad to have it done, though :)

**Author's Note:**

> do NOT try to find a direct religious allegory in this, this is a story about a dumbass named Anakin hanging around in a magical bubble of magic, nothing more. the word 'saint' is used only for convenience and the implication of patronage (in this case of abused children). also - everyone that Anakin appears to is presumed to be force sensitive to at least an extent.


End file.
